Help:Editing
Absolute beginners? If you can type and click, you can edit most pages on this wiki. #'Find a page to improve'. (If you want, you can practice in the Sandbox first. It's there for "practicing", or experimenting with almost anything. It's a good place to get used to how the wiki works.) #'Click "Edit this page"'. #An "edit box" will open - type your new sentences or corrections (just like MS or Lotus or WordPerfect wordprocessing) #'Click the "Save" button' - (well, it may be wise to hit the "Preview" button first, in case of mistakes!) #'You're now a Web Publisher. Welcome to the team!' More detail As with all wikis, you can edit any non-protected page on this Wikia. Your changes will be visible immediately. Just click the "edit" link that appears near the top of every page. Explain your edit in the "Summary" box between the edit window and the save and preview buttons. eg: "typo" or "added info on xyz". Use the "Show preview" button to check your edit and get the formatting right before saving. Remember to Save page before moving on. If you are logged in, you can mark an edit as minor by checking the This is a minor edit box to let people know your edit is not something substantive. To try editing, open a new window and go to the Sandbox (which is an editing test area), and then click the "edit" link. Add something and click save. Formatting Most text formatting is usually done with wiki markup, so you don't have to learn HTML. Starting a new article One of the big things here is that we use templates to start page. Fortunately, there's a really easy way to bring them up, and they make entering information a lot easier as well! To bring a template up, select it from the 'preload dropdown' in the tools section towards the bottom of the page. Currently available page types are: *Artist (for bands) *Musician (for solo artists and band members) *Album (For full-length albums) *Label (for record labels) *EP (for EPs and extended singles) *Single (for singles with two or three tracks, typically an A-side and a B-side) *Genre (for musical genres) *Soundtrack (for soundtrack compilations for movies or TV shows) Please do not create: *Song (for individual songs) exceptions: if songs, not ever released a single, have a special meaning due to reception or events related to this song. Or if there can be a complete full-detailed article provided for this song. Or some songs, not ever released as single, can reach official single/airplay/streaming charts. *Mix CD (for user-created Mix CDs and Mixtapes) we only accept official releases, as well as bootlegs and unofficial releases. But no user created stuff! Naming articles For links, the format is typically: *Artist: Artist *Album/EP/Single: Album *Song: Song For artist and album names, that refer to many things, you need to separate them by using brackets. ;Examples: * Run Runaway (Great Big Sea song) for the song of the musical group Great Big Sea * Run Runaway (Slade song) for the song of the musical group Slade * Drakkar (band), if the article is about the musical group Drakkar * Drakkar (album), if the article is about the album Drakkar * Drakkar (label), if the article is about the label Drakkar and so on, and so on Bold and italics Bold and italics are added by surrounding a word or phrase with multiple apostrophes ('): *''italics'' is rendered as italics. (2 apostrophes on each side) *'bold' is rendered as bold. (3 apostrophes on each side) *''bolded italics'' is rendered as bolded italics. (2 + 3 = 5 apostrophes on each side) Headings and subheadings Headings and subheadings are an easy way to improve the organization of an article. If you can see two or more distinct topics being discussed, you can break up your article by inserting a heading for each section. Headings can be created like this: * Main heading (2 equals signs) * Subheading (3 equals signs) * Another level down (4 equals signs) * Another level down (5 equals signs) If an article has at least three headings, a table of contents (TOC) will be automatically generated. Try creating some headings in the Sandbox and see the effect on the TOC. Indenting To indent text, place a colon (:) right at the beginning of a line. The more colons you put, the further indented the text will be. A newline (pressing Enter or Return) marks the end of the indented paragraph. For example: This is aligned all the way to the left. ::This is indented slightly. :::This is indented more. is shown as: This is aligned all the way to the left. :This is indented slightly. ::This is indented more. Bullet points To insert a bullet, use an asterisk (*). Similar to rectal indentation, more asterisks in front of a paragraph means more indentation. A brief example: :*First list item :*Second list item :**Sub-list item under second :*Isn't this fun? Which is shown as: :*First list item :*Second list item :**Sub-list item under second :*Isn't this fun? Numbered lists You can also create numbered lists. For this, use the number sign or hash symbol (#). Using more #s will affect the level of indenting. Example: :#First item :#Second item :##Sub-item under second item :#Third item Shows up as: :#First item :#Second item :##Sub-item under second item :#Third item Adding categories Please be sure to add proper categories. You can get help by take a look at . Categories should specify the article. ;Musical groups Musical groups categories should consist of origin and their musical style. Example: if the band is from Germany and plays post hardcore, then it makes sense to use Category:German post hardcore musical groups. Please use always musical groups instead of bands. It's always recommended for "big music countries". "Small music countries" like Kazakhstan, Serbia etc. can simply have Category:Kazakh rock musical groups and stuff. Musical groups should also be categorized with years of establishment, disestablishment and, if given, reestablishment. This is an example how it would look like. Musical groups also can be categorized by the musical label they are signed. It's always recommended when big musical labels like Columbia, Warner Bros., Atlatic etc. are involved. You can use it like that: Category:Columbia Records artists, Category:Atlantic Records artists, Category:Philips Records artists etc. ;Albums / Compilations The try to create album categories by style failed. This would make things too big. So the album categories always consist of Artist, Year of release and the releasing labels. In some cases, there can also be the producer mentioned. Here you have an example how it looks like. ;Singles / EPs Same as seen on "Albums / Compilations". Exception: EP categories should have artist and year only, no producers or labels. Most EPs are indie releases and need no closer categorization. Links Links are important on wikis to help readers navigate your site. Internal links You can extensively cross-reference wiki pages using internal links. You can add links to existing titles, and also to titles you think ought to exist in future. To make a link to another page on the same wiki, just put the title in double square brackets. For example, if you want to make a link to, say, the Main Page, it would be: :Main Page If you want to use words other than the article title as the text of the link, you can add an alternative name by adding it after a pipe "|" divider (SHIFT + BACKSLASH on English-layout and other keyboards). For example, if you wanted to make a link to the Main Page, but wanted it to say "home page" you would write it as such: :View the home page... It would appear as: :View the home page... When you want to use the plural of an article title (or add any other suffix) for your link, you can add the extra letters directly outside the double square brackets. For example, you would write: :Add questions to the Wikia for quizzes. It would appear as: :Add questions to the Wikia for quizzes. (the link will be red if this page does not yet exist) Interwiki links To link to another Wikia, you can use its title followed by a colon and the article name, instead of using the full URL. For example, the Creatures Wiki home page is at Creatures:Main Page, which can be typed as :Creatures:Main Page :rather than as http://creatures.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page This style of link works for any wiki in the interwiki map, not just for Wikia. See the Central Wikia page at Wikia:Help:Interwiki link. External links If you want to link to a site outside of Wikia, you may just type the full URL for the page you want to link to. :http://www.google.com/ It is often more useful to make the link display something other than the URL, so use one square bracket at each end, with the alternative title after the full URL address, separated by a space (not a pipe). So if you want the link to appear as Google search engine, just type: :Google search engine These external links are on bottom of an article and have the heading External links . Please be sure to add important infos only and not to overcompensate it. External links can also be used as sources. You need to use description . Be sure to put References below "External links" to make the sources visible. Please pay attention: * external links should not include advertising spaces. * sources should include external pages that approves some lines in an article. And also here: no advertising spaces! Redirects To redirect automatically from one page to another, type #REDIRECT and then put in brackets the name of the page to be redirected to. For example, you could redirect from "Cats" to "Cat". That way, anyone typing either version in the search box will automatically go to "Cat". Templates in the past years, admins and bureaucrats created and exported a big bunch of Templates. We do not need any further templates. Please refrain from creating templates. Most importantly, have fun and thank you very much for bringing your own expertise and personal point of view to Your Subculture Soundtrack! Editing